Stephen O’Grady has a good Q&A piece on the open source Java debate. I’m agree with both Stephen and Jonathan in that I don’t want to see a fork or compromised Java. I’m particularly sensitive to this because of my last Linux install. I think Ubuntu is the best because it is very easy to install and maintain, but it doesn’t support RPMs so I had trouble with the VMWare install. It was a real pain.
So obviously Linux is open sourced and because of that it is widely used, developed, and adopted; many Linux based devices are easily hacked. But even if you standardize on a distribution, it can be a real pain to install and maintain software. I do want to see even wider adoption of Java, but I don’t want to manage Java on Ubuntu, Java on Windows, Java on Simbian, Java on SuSE, etc. It’s just not worth it.